by Jana Petken
Mercy looked at Lina for guidance. She was at a loss at what to do next. These men were not gentlemen, and they appeared to be oblivious to reason. Why they were here in the middle of the night was a mystery, but she had no time to speculate. They were threatening to kill Lina and Seth, and she believed they would do it.
She saw defeat on Lina’s face. This scared her, for she had never seen Lina afraid of anything. She tried to read her friend’s expression. She had probably not given her freedom papers a thought in the rush to leave the boarding house, but even if she had, she doubted it would change the men’s intentions. Lina’s skin was only slightly darker than her own, yet these men had spotted her black heritage the moment they’d seen her – and they seemed to hate Negros.
Panic was overpowering Mercy’s calm demeanour. She had to think fast. She couldn’t stand there gaping at the men for much longer. “I have some money. It’s yours if you forget you ever saw us,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Come on – do you really want to waste your time stringing up two niggers? Just take the money.”
Joe looked at Kyle, held out his hand, and nodded. “Why, thank you kindly. I don’t mind if I do,” he said.
Mercy’s hand went into her jacket pocket. She pulled out a few dollar bills and placed them in Joe’s palm. “Lina, Seth, get to the wagon,” she said. “We’ve lost enough time here.”
“I didn’t say you could go,” Joe said.
“But I gave you money – you took it from me,” Mercy said angrily.
Joe raised an eyebrow in amusement. “Take the young ’un,” he said to Kyle.
Seth was pulled roughly by the ear. He now stood some distance from Lina, shivering with fear in Kyle’s firm grasp.
“We’ll hang this one first and let the old nigger bitch watch. There’s a good tree back there, next to the wagon,” Kyle said.
Mercy was horrified. Hang Lina and Seth? Over her dead body! “Get your bleedin’ hands off of him. We made a deal!” she shouted.
“Lady, shut your mouth. I ain’t listening to you no more. Go on now. Git going before we string you up too.”
Lina’s eyes darted from Joe to Kyle. “Boys, wait a minute. My husband owns a boarding house in Newport News. What you say we get this mix-up out the way and then I give you boys the keys to that place? You and your friends are welcome to stay there with our compliments whenever it takes your fancy. How does that sound?”
Kyle let go of Seth, swung the rifle strap off his arm, gripped the rifle with both hands, took a long stride forwards, and struck Lina’s face with its butt.
Lina stumbled backwards, fell on her backside, and stared up at him. As the pain hit her, she looked dizzy, shocked, and terrified.
Kyle hung the rifle’s leather strap back over his shoulder and shot her a thunderous look. “Shut your nigger mouth! There ain’t nothing you can say that we want to hear.”
“How dare you, you bloody big bully!” Mercy shouted again before she could stop herself.
“Will you shut your hole? You’re testin’ my patience, God damn it!”
Mercy felt the heat in her face. Her blood was boiling. She couldn’t let this happen. She had to do something. “I’m warning you: leave them alone. I’m not giving you my money and then watching you take them into the bargain, you thieving swine.”
Lina’s hand cupped her cheek, where blood was pouring from a deep gash. She was silently weeping. Her eyes pleaded with Mercy not to do or say anything else.
Kyle spat out his tobacco. Mercy shuddered. He reminded her of Eddie. “Please don’t do this,” she begged him.
“Grab the old nigger,” Kyle told Joe. “And you – you’re lucky we don’t kill white women,” he said to Mercy.
Joe pulled Lina to her feet by her hair. Kyle clipped Seth around the ear. Both men turned their backs on Mercy, indifferent to her tears. They dragged Lina and Seth in the direction of the clearing. Their determined strides were so long that Lina had trouble keeping her balance. She was crying, and Seth was begging them to stop.
Mercy watched in horror until she couldn’t bear to watch another moment. She drew her gun and cocked it. “Stop! Stay right where you are!” she shouted. She had acted on pure instinct, but now that the weapon was in her hand, she froze with fear.
Joe and Kyle turned at the sound of Mercy’s shrill voice and laughed at her. Joe said, “Now what did you go and do that for? Are you aimin’ to shoot me and my friend – a little lady like you?”
“I’m not a little lady, and I don’t mind at all if I shoot you between the eyes. Take your hands off those niggers,” Mercy demanded.
The two men laughed again, clearly amused at Mercy’s youthful passion.
Mercy stared at each face and then finally looked into Lina’s eyes. “Run, Lina!” she screamed.
Lina jerked her arm free of Joe’s grasp and then stumbled backwards a few feet. She turned to run. Joe fired his gun, hitting her in the back, and she dropped to the ground with an excruciating moan.
Mercy pulled the trigger. Her bullet struck Joe in the chest. Meanwhile, Kyle was tussling for the gun with Seth, who had surprised him with an unexpected display of defiance. The young black boy fought valiantly to disarm Kyle. A shot rang out, and Seth fell to his knees, gripping his side.
Mercy aimed and fired, hitting Kyle in the centre of his forehead. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Joe on his belly with arm outstretched, reaching for his gun. She fired again, killing him with a close-range shot to the back of his head.
She stood for a second, and then her legs buckled. She dropped like a brick and panted for air. She was on all fours, staring at the ground, which darted up to meet her. The ringing in her ears clouded her mind of all reasonable thought. Flashbacks to the shootings engulfed her, and she winced, reliving them as though they were happening in the present. She shook her head from side to side, and the ringing became a soft whistle. “Lina … Lina … Oh God, please no!” she sobbed.
She crawled over to where Lina lay, her hands and palms grazed and cut on rough-edged stones. Lina’s legs lay awkwardly. Her hands cradled her belly, and she moaned softly through a mouth filling with blood. Mercy reached her. She took Lina’s hands and looked at the gaping hole in her stomach, bordered by a large patch of blood and looking black in the darkness. The bullet had gone all the way through. Blood was trickling outwards on the pebbles beneath her body. Mercy put pressure on the wound with both hands and stared into Lina’s rolling eyes. “Lina, Lina, I’m here. You’re going to be all right. I’ll get help …”
Lina focused her eyes on Mercy’s face and laboriously lifted her bloodied hand to stroke it. “You did good, but ole Lina’s done …” She coughed silently. Blood stained her teeth and trickled down her chin.
Mercy took Lina’s hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. “Don’t leave me, Lina. Please don’t go … Lina? Lina!” Mercy cried.
Lina coughed once more in a feeble attempt to clear her blood-cluttered throat. Her eyes widened. She took her last breath whilst staring into Mercy’s eyes and then exhaled it slowly to linger in the night air.
Mercy lay down beside Lina’s body, inconsolable with grief and shock, feeling physical pain. Her heart beat so fast it was making her dizzy. He mind filled up with thoughts and questions she couldn’t answer. What should she have done? was her first question. Why didn’t she shoot the two men when their backs were to her? She had hesitated. She had not wanted to fire. She never wanted to hurt them.
“Oh God, forgive me, forgive me … Oh God, no!” She wept like a baby, rocking Lina in her arms. Her wrenching sobs ripped from her throat and joined howling animals nearby with barely a distinction in sound between them. Eventually, she crawled over to Seth. He was dead. She sat on the ground, covering her face with her hands. She should have reacted quicker, she thought, reliving it all over again. Her lack of courage and strength had taken the life of the woman she adored and that of an innocent boy.
She struggled to her feet.
She would never hesitate again. She had finally learned that in this life, you killed or were killed when guns were involved. There would be no more restraint. She would not be Mercy Carver with a gun in her hand. She would be a warrior, determined to survive. She would cull her fears, for precious lives had been snuffed out tonight because of her terror.
She walked to the river on unsteady legs and washed her hands. She removed Eddie’s old hat and ducked her entire head under the river’s water in an attempt to shock herself into waking up from her stupor and to put a stop to her weeping. She stood looking at the scene, trying her best to put chaotic thoughts into some semblance of order. Her first priority was to get out of here. The two men had been alone. Had there been more of them, they would have come running upon hearing the cracking of gunfire that had echoed into the air. The shots had sounded like thunderclaps and would have reached a good distance; therefore, she had to presume that the two men she’d killed were not part of a bigger group.
Her task now was to take Lina home to Charlie. The rifles belonging to the two dead soldiers were on the ground, still hanging loosely over the men’s shoulders. She left them where they lay. She went to the clearing and then led the horses and wagon back with her to the riverbank. She looked down at the man called Joe. He had killed Lina, and as far as she was concerned, there was no death horrible enough for the likes of him.
She stared at his face with loathing and then kicked every part of his body, not stopping until she found herself breathless. Tears once again rolled down her face. She almost wished that he still lived in order to inflict yet more pain, such was her hatred. She looked at him once more and spat on the back of his head just before she turned away.
She knelt by Seth and put Kyle’s gun into the palm of Seth’s hand, curling his fingers around it, and placing one of them on the trigger. “I’m sorry, Seth. I’m so sorry – please forgive me,” she whispered. She despised herself for blaming Seth for the killings, but it would answer any questions that might arise when the dead bodies were found. “Dead,” she said aloud, the familiar word slipping off her tongue with ease. She had killed five men in the space of a few months. The gates of hell would be waiting wide open for her. She would go straight there, without call for God’s judgement, for he now possessed more than enough evidence to convict her.
She stared once more into Lina’s beautiful face, failing to stop a throaty sob. For the first time in her life, she had lost a person she truly loved. Grief was beyond measure, she thought. There was no word to amply describe how she felt – desolation and sorrow fell short, as did sadness, for she had already experienced what was perceived to be those emotions. She felt physically sick. Her stomach was knotted so tightly that it constricted her breathing. If she relaxed her body and exhaled properly, she was sure a piercing, painful scream would rip its way out of her mouth. It would be irrepressible. She didn’t need to fear death anymore, she thought, for she was already in hell.
Chapter Seven
Listening to Elizabeth Stone’s childish weeping, Margaret Mallory was at the end of her tether. She wanted to batter the stupid woman into silence, but instead she displayed a sympathetic facial expression, which played a major role in her facade of required social niceties. These nuances were necessary tools in order to achieve her goals; however, constantly having to use them tested her patience to the very limit of endurance.
Margaret missed Madame du Pont. She found it increasingly difficult to adjust to the false character she was playing, where a compassionate ear, amiability, and feminine charms gained respect. Madam du Pont never had to conceal her thoughts or actions in her mansion, yet here she was having to put up with a mealy-mouthed pathetic bitch who in the old days would have been disposed of long before now.
Margaret’s forced retirement had not brought her the successful life she’d hoped for. The losses suffered in Liverpool were never far from her mind, for they had completely devastated her in so many ways. There was nothing she’d like better than to get on a ship back to Liverpool, where life had been so straightforward and people had been so easy to manipulate. But that life did not exist anymore, nor would it ever return to her.
She had unanswered questions, so many of them that they were driving her mad. There were no answers as to why a multitude of disasters continued to strike her in this new land. She would never know what or who had set her mansion on fire. Nothing more had been said or done about poor Eddie’s murder. The money that had been stolen on the night he’d been killed had never been recovered, nor had the slave, Nelson.
Her sister, Myrtle, and her continuing absence also perplexed her. She had expected her to turn up at the door at least a month ago. She’d sent letters every week since the beginning of February, begging for news on the Knightsbridge house sale. She had wondered lately if something unsavoury had befallen Myrtle, but she’d thrown that belief out the window, and she was now convinced that her dear sister had deliberately cut off all communication with her and was on the run with her well-earned money.
She would be ruined within months – no, less. It would be no more than a few weeks. Everything here cost much more than she’d expected. The rotten winter snow had almost collapsed the roof, and she’d paid a bloody fortune to get it fixed. Slaves were more expensive than she’d first thought, and she’d lost four of the buggers already! Two of her horses had been stolen along with her guns – and as for Sheriff John Manning, well that had ended as quickly as it had begun. He’d dropped her like a hot coal, without an explanation or by your leave. She’d wondered why at first, until Jacob bloody Stone came to mind. She was convinced that he’d told tales about her to John. She wouldn’t put it past him to do a rotten thing like that. She had no proof, but John Manning had given her the brush- off, and it wasn’t because he didn’t like what she gave him in bed. No, Stone was waging war – and that meant their little arrangement was well and truly over. She’d gut the bastard! Jesus, the list of disasters went on and on …
“Have some cake, dear,” she said to Elizabeth to break the silence.
She watched Elizabeth clasp yet another clean handkerchief in her delicate hands. Christ almighty, how many bloody handkerchiefs did she have? she wondered. Madam du Pont would never have been forced to befriend someone like Elizabeth. She was weak and gullible, pitifully so.
She sighed and ordered more tea, which seemed to cure all ails for spoilt Southern women. She banished her thoughts and concentrated entirely on Elizabeth and her continued weeping. “You really do need to eat something, dear,” she said. “You’ll be fit for nothing if you don’t get some food inside you.”
Elizabeth sobbed once more for good measure whilst wringing her hands and shaking her head as if trying to clear her confusion. “Why, Margaret, I declare, I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do? Should I stay with Ma and Pa until I find my own house or should I move into Portsmouth immediately?”
“Well, dear, first of all, you have to decide where you want to live.”
“I don’t understand,” Elizabeth said petulantly. “I told you not two days ago that I want to live in Portsmouth – just off Court Road, near the church, because that’s where all the most expensive houses are. I do so want to be in a good neighbourhood.”
“Yes, of course you do. I remember now … Elizabeth, have you considered the ramifications of being a divorced woman?”
“Ramifications … I’m not sure what you mean with that word.”
Margaret sipped her tea and then put the cup back on the saucer. The stupid bitch didn’t even understand proper English. She folded her napkin and at the same time took on a pained expression. She was aware of Elizabeth’s eyes on her and that the girl was feeling uneasy. She looked up and shook her head in dismay. “Oh, my dear girl, I didn’t want to say anything to you, but seeing you in such a state is breaking my heart, so it is. I feel it’s only right that you should know …”
“Know what? Please, Margaret, you have to tell me. What are th
ese … ramifications?”
“Well, when a divorced woman is beautiful, such as yourself, married women become envious and suspicious. It’s in their nature, dear. Jealousy knows no bounds, believe me, and they don’t call it the little green devil for nothing. What these married women don’t realise is that by constantly accusing their men of infidelity with other women, the poor cows end up doing more damage to their marriages than a newly divorced woman ever could. I know this through my own experience. I was younger then, of course, but after my dear husband passed, I lost friends. They suddenly saw me as a threat. I was cut off from all social gatherings – ostracised I was, as if I never existed. Elizabeth, I expect you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’m telling you that you won’t be accepted by these people here, not anymore. And there you have it. These are your ramifications.”
Margaret picked up her cup and watched Elizabeth’s ever-changing expression. She smiled to herself. The girl’s eyes were tearing up, just as she’d hoped they would. They were wide with fear, and if she weren’t mistaken, they’d overflow like a riverbank in spring any minute now.
“I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Maybe I should have held my tongue, but I think it’s better for you to be forewarned. Haven’t you noticed the way people are looking at you, turning their backs on you? I saw it for myself yesterday when we were at that restaurant. There were some women there who were talking about you, and what they said wasn’t very nice. You didn’t hear them, did you?”
Elizabeth shook her head as if unable to speak.
“I was ready to say something to them, but I didn’t want to make a scene.”
“Wh-what did they say?” Elizabeth sobbed.
“Well, only that they would have to keep away from you because a lot of men were going off to war and there wouldn’t be many left to go around. It was disgraceful. They said that you would stop at nothing to get at their husbands, so they were going to shut doors in your face … Wait, is that what they said? Yes, that’s right. Those were the exact words.”